I will never forget a line that Peter Roebuck wrote in a cricket match report. It was wildly over-the-top and heavy-handed, and it symbolised what made his writing so very unique and special, but also, why he turned others off.
The line set the scene for a match report on a typically grey day of Ashes play in England in 2001 and went as follows: “Neither chill winds nor dark clouds that came like Heathcliff’s scowl over proceedings could quite drain the opening day of its tension or occasion.”
Most writers would have been content to write “grey” or “drizzly”. Not Roebuck. For him, only a reference to the chief character of Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights would suffice.
It’s a fine line between beautiful, crafted prose that elevates sport to an artform, and flowery, tryhard lines that scream “Look at me! I’m a writer!” Peter Roebuck, as all but his most loyal readers would agree, was capable of both. But even when he was a little obtuse, or even extremely obtuse, he was always a great read.
Roebuck, who took his own life in South Africa yesterday, was a former topline English county player who never represented his country, despite being widely regarded as having the talent to do so. After his playing career, he set up shop both in Australia and South Africa, and was as active as coach and mentor to underprivileged African cricketers as he was in the media.
But this is not a piece about the man, whom I knew only to nod and say hello to in the press box, or his deeds. It is a salute to a gifted, if flawed, cricket writer.
Let it be said, as clearly as possible, that original voices are required in the sports media just as they are in the arts or any other field of life. That’s why Roebuck’s ABC radio colleague Kerry O’Keefe does so well. Kerry sounds like Kerry and no one else, just like Bill Lawry sounds only like Bill Lawry and Richie Benaud sounds like no one who has come before or will ever come again.
Even the grating Tony Greig has the saving grace of sounding only like Tony Greig. At least when Tony’s on the box, you know it’s Tony. Today’s commentary boxes, not to mention newspaper columns, are increasingly full of drones who regurgitate the same old tired phrases that fill us with despair when they come from media-trained sportsmen. How can we bag them when we’re doing it ourselves?
Roebuck never did that. To sit down to a Roebuck column with a strong cup of coffee was a delight. You knew, beyond doubt, that the column would be full of phrases and references you just wouldn’t get anywhere else. Some of those phrases would grate. Others would make you want to whoop with delight.
In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, they’ve plucked a gem of a Roebuckian description of Allan Border: “A glint eyed toughie, black hat and stubbled chin, the fellow who plays poker and spits in the spittoon.”
On his day, Roebuck could really nail it. Character assessment was his strength. Indeed, his greatest character assessment was not of any particular individual but of the whole Australian psyche. In short, he got what made us tough. He understood that this is a country where the strong survive, where talent is far more important more than the colour of your old school tie. He genuinely loved Australia for this.
He was also a technical analyst without peer, a fact which was often obscured by his own purple prose. In his very last column, he spoke about struggling young opening batsman Phillip Hughes being “open chested on the back foot”. The whole of Australia could tell his faulty technique was causing him to get too many nicks. Roebuck explained exactly why, as he had done countless times.
Roebuck wasn’t one to get close to players. Indeed, he wasn’t one to get close to many people at all, and would often vanish halfway through functions. His distance from players occasionally worked against him. He wrote reams of praise about Stuart MacGill’s principled stance against touring Zimbabwe, despite the fact he never once contacted MacGill to talk about it. This irked MacGill.
But mostly, his distance was a strength. There’s a great tale about a touring Fairfax cricket journo who was once afraid to write a yarn about a Ricky Ponting tantrum overseas, as he quite rightly believed Ponting would not speak to him again. (In the end, the Herald’s foreign correspondent offered to write the yarn.)
Roebuck never had this problem. He always wrote what was on his mind. And so, in 2008, he penned the front page SMH column that in many ways will always define him. After Australia’s last minute win in the acrimonious Test against India at the SCG, Roebuck took offence at Australia’s in-your-face celebrations, calling for Ponting’s sacking as captain.
Three years down the track, it now seems like a ridiculously harsh call. Roebuck himself once suggested he may have gone too far. But tensions were high at the time and Roebuck went with his gut. Whether he was right or wrong hardly matters. The point is, no one else had the courage to make such a bold call.
There is a book which never leaves my bedside table. It is Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. Leonard, the brilliantly sparse writer of crime and western novels, names as his first rule: “never open a book with weather”.
Even when he wasn’t writing about dark clouds like Heathcliff’s scowl, Roebuck habitually broke just about every rule in the book. Leonard also wrote about the pitfalls of commencing lines with adverbs like “suddenly”. Robeuck was the master of that. His stories were always “happily this” and “fortuitously that”.
But when all is done, Roebuck followed his own writing rules, not someone else’s. He was a fan of cricketers like Shane Warne who played the game their own distinctive way, and Peter Roebuck undeniably played the journalism game his own way. Whether you liked his stuff or not, you had to admire it.
In many ways, you had to admire the man too, who we can now see was as passionate yet tortured as Emily Bronte’s fictional character Heathcliff.
Though we should also reserve judgement to some extent, pending the police investigation into Roebuck’s death, which South African authorities say will take a month.
In 2001, Roebuck received a suspended jail sentence for common assault, after he physically punished three young South African cricketers he was coaching. Though he pleaded guilty and was deeply contrite, a broader review of the man’s character does not seem entirely inappropriate.
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